I had the opportunity to visit Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon National Park, and Yosemite National Park this past week. I’m not sure if opportunity is the correct word here. Perhaps privilege is better. Or honor. Or delight.
It was absolutely a thing of magic.
I’ve been really caught up in everything lately. I’ve been wrapped up in work things and personal things and all the things. I haven’t really been able to give myself a chance to stop and breathe. Well, nothing makes you stop and breathe like a park filled with the largest trees on the planet.
Holy. Shit.
I’m lucky in that I’ve been around Redwoods before. I was in Muir Woods years ago with my ex and we wandered around and snapped some cheesy pics. And still, nothing compared to being in Sequoia National Park.
I mean, first and foremost, I was with people who I genuinely enjoyed being around. My ex didn’t fit into that category at that point in our relationship. We had moved into the seemingly benign but ultimately dangerous territory of torturesome complacency. He may have even been cheating on me at that point. I don’t have confirmation, and it doesn’t do much for my brain or heart to contemplate. It really doesn’t matter. The real point is that it wasn’t really a memorable experience for me, sadly. When I look at the photos from that day, those I’ve chosen to save, I have only a faint connection to the images.
It’s ironic, really, because the place where I often feel the most (in the great outdoors) was, at that point, just another place where I cruised through the motions.
Anyway, I didn’t even know I needed a do-over until I was standing in front of the trees and absolutely gawking, tears filling my eyes.
Glorious. They are absolutely insanely glorious. Giant, strong, powerful, beings.
The easiest takeaways for me had to do with the way in which we, as humans, routinely exhibit an absolute lack of care for this gorgeous place that gives us so much (Earth). But the more intense and nuanced lesson had to do with the way in which I moved through the world.
I could easily tell you that no matter my frame of mind, I try and find myself in a space filled with gratitude. And that’s mostly true. Except for the times when it’s not. Except for those moments when I am so intent on protecting what I perceive to be my peace that I end up floating in a space that’s entirely artificial. This is a space where I am mostly in survival mode and not really interested in absorbing much about the world around me. Seems criminal that I would do it in a place like Muir Woods, but alas, that’s what happened.
This time, things were different for me. I still had stuff sitting on my brain, but more prominent was a deep-seated desire to move those things to the back space in my noggin for a heartbeat. I wanted to disconnect. I wanted to lose myself in the biophilia of it all.
I am not writing this post to tell you that you should connect with nature, though it’s really not a bad idea. I’m not writing to tell you that we should work harder to save this big, beautiful planet we live on, though we should. I am writing this to admit that there are times when we miss so much because all the things that either don’t matter or can’t matter. There are so many times when we have an inability to extract the good from a challenging situation and so, we end up sitting on the side that’s most comfortable, even if that’s the side that least serves us.
If I am steeped in unhappiness and living in a flagrant state of denial, it’s just easier to put all of my energy into that effort. To allow myself to step out of that would be to tiptoe into the unknown or uncomfortable. To be clear, I don’t mean that allowing myself to fully enjoy Muir Woods would have been disconcerting because of where I was and what I was doing. No, it would have thrown me off because the joy would have been an easy baseline for comparison.
My heart would have whispered: This, THIS is what happiness feels like, so pay attention to what doesn’t feel just like this right now.
I couldn’t face that, didn’t want to, and so it was easier to just blur the edges entirely.
I understand why I did it and why I have done it and why others choose it. The numbness is safer in some ways (it’s not, really) and so, we let ourselves sit in that emptiness. But this time, I chose the feelings. All of them. And I made that decision knowing full well that you can’t selectively choose the good ones. I mean, you can focus on them, but when you let those in, nearly everything rises to the top.
Here’s the thing, though- I used to think, as I just shared, that letting in the good stuff would only make the bad stuff feel worse. And sure, that tends to happen. But also, you get to feel that high and so, while it highlights the stuff that maybe needs to shift, it also gives you all the warm and fuzzies. It gives you a reason to fight through the ick. It gives you the solid understanding that underneath the pain or same old, you are capable of letting the sun warm your face.
I’m not making light of depression or minimizing how difficult it is to work your way through some of the toughest stuff we contend with as human beings. At all. I guess I’m just saying that I’ve found the first step in getting to the other side is starting the wade through it all. You can’t chart a course unless you assess where to start. You can’t move forward unless you start moving.
I am not being cute here, I’m just telling you that this time, I felt it all. I really did. I felt the ecstatic joy and heavy sadness, all at once. I felt mesmerized and amazed and disappointed and energized and fatigued.
It wasn’t easy to manage it all, but also, I’m really glad I let it all in. I’m really glad I hugged those fucking trees and breathed that air and cried in front of waterfalls.
I’m really glad I let myself to lean into the magic, with the understanding that sometimes it’s magic and sometimes, it’s just real life things.
X
L.
thepathtoworthy.com 